Brooke worked for more than a decade as a sports massage therapist for elite athletes and sporting teams in Queensland, but says relocating to her hometown of Kempsey to work in pathology has been a rewarding change of direction.

What do you do and why does it matter?

I’m a sci­en­tist cur­rent­ly respon­si­ble for Bio­chem­istry in the pathol­o­gy depart­ment at Kempsey Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal. Kempsey is a rur­al town locat­ed on the beau­ti­ful Macleay Val­ley on the Mid North Coast. We pro­vide rou­tine and urgent pathol­o­gy ser­vices to the rur­al and remote com­mu­ni­ties of the Macleay Val­ley. Being in a rur­al area, med­ical ser­vices are very lim­it­ed, and this hos­pi­tal is often the first pre­sen­ta­tion for patients requir­ing essen­tial med­ical care.

Tell us about your scientific career path and what inspired you to work in biochemistry?

I was a sports mas­sage ther­a­pist for over 10 years work­ing with elite ath­letes and sport­ing teams in Townsville, Queens­land. It is such a phys­i­cal job and even­tu­al­ly the hands and back wore out.

I had always had a keen inter­est in phys­i­ol­o­gy and diag­nos­tic med­i­cine and returned to Uni and com­plet­ed my Bach­e­lor of Med­ical Sci­ence (Pathol­o­gy) in 2023, relo­cat­ing back to my home­town of Kempsey.

I pre­fer work­ing in a small­er lab­o­ra­to­ry as a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tist cov­er­ing all depart­ments of the lab. I like when you can put togeth­er the full clin­i­cal pic­ture from haema­tol­ogy, coag­u­la­tion, bio­chem­istry, micro­bi­ol­o­gy and trans­fu­sion results.

A proud moment or interesting case?

My most inter­est­ing case was a young child who pre­sent­ed to the Emer­gency Depart­ment with acute res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress from influen­za and dark bloody urine. We ran a full blood count, and the haemo­glo­bin was crit­i­cal­ly low.

We urgent­ly looked at the patient’s blood film which showed marked blis­ter and bite cells which is seen in oxida­tive haemol­y­sis where the red blood cells break­down caus­ing acute anaemia. The child had undi­ag­nosed G6PD defi­cien­cy, a very rare genet­ic con­di­tion that caus­es a defi­cien­cy in the enzymes that pro­tect the red blood cells from dam­age from oxida­tive stress. The child’s influen­za had increased the oxida­tive stress on the red blood cells trig­ger­ing the acute haemolysis/red cell break­down and anaemia.

At the time we were one of 3 labs on a pilot pro­gram for Cellav­i­sion – an auto­mat­ed dig­i­tal microscopy sys­tem that per­forms white blood cell dif­fer­en­tials and assess­es red blood cell mor­phol­o­gy. Being a rur­al hos­pi­tal with no on-site haema­tol­o­gist, this allowed us to con­tact a haema­tol­o­gist to review the film remote­ly for urgent assess­ment for this patient and diag­no­sis of the G6PD deficiency.

What do you like to do to unwind outside of work?

I’m very cre­ative and like to spend my time doing any­thing art or craft relat­ed. I’m doing some ren­o­va­tion projects on my house, so that’s keep­ing me busy. And most impor­tant­ly any­thing to do with the beach! We have the most beau­ti­ful beach­es on the Mid North Coast.

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